Pre-Release CIV VI Discussion

[Gavagai]

But I guess the reason for it is so that established cities can provide the production for the basic level of improvements in a new city.

If that was the goal, it could also be done by making a national pool of "public works" production which is then distributed between building improvements throughout the empire. The choice here is whether we want worker micro to be the part of the game or not. And in regards to this question Civ6 seems to to take a rather weird middle road. In my opinion, the main things which worker units add to the game are the ability to use them tactically (combat engineers) and the fact that they can / should be captured / protected. Now, they already removed road building which makes workers useless in combat. They also greatly diminished the importance of capturing workers by making an individual worker less valuable. I don't think that mini-game of optimization of worker moves adds a lot of value to gameplay but they castrated even this aspect by making all improvements 1 turn builds. At this point I start to wonder why they want to have workers at all.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

But I guess the reason for it is so that established cities can provide the production for the basic level of improvements in a new city.

If that was the goal, it could also be done by making a national pool of "public works" production which is then distributed between building improvements throughout the empire. The choice here is whether we want worker micro to be the part of the game or not. And in regards to this question Civ6 seems to to take a rather weird middle road. In my opinion, the main things which worker units add to the game are the ability to use them tactically (combat engineers) and the fact that they can / should be captured / protected. Now, they already removed road building which makes workers useless in combat. They also greatly diminished the importance of capturing workers by making an individual worker less valuable. I don't think that mini-game of optimization of worker moves adds a lot of value to gameplay but they castrated even this aspect by making all improvements 1 turn builds. At this point I start to wonder why they want to have workers at all.

Agree, with workers being consumable and everything a 1 turn build, and if they definitely cannot build roads in the final release you might as well have a city build the improvements, and you choose where they are put the turn it is built/turn started

[Bacchus]

If that was the goal, it could also be done by making a national pool of "public works" production which is then distributed between building improvements throughout the empire.

It is a little more complicated than this, you need to bottleneck the amount of production that can be passed from a developed city to a new one, if you want the developed cities to keep developing at all. But the bottleneck also needs to be pretty dynamic, responsive to empire size, etc. Having to pass production via a unit, which has to walk to improvement sites is functionally such a bottleneck. And in Civ4, of course, it was halting city growth for the time of worker production.

[Windsor]

they can / should be captured / protected. Now, they already removed road building which makes workers useless in combat. They also greatly diminished the importance of capturing workers by making an individual worker less valuable. I don't think that mini-game of optimization of worker moves adds a lot of value to gameplay but they castrated even this aspect by making all improvements 1 turn builds. At this point I start to wonder why they want to have workers at all.

You get military engineers to build roads according to IGN.

Capturing workers is something I would have removed from Civ4 and Civ5. It's a highly problematic feature because of the AI. Not only does the AI struggle with protecting workers, they're not allowed to capture workers because the human players would whine if the AI lurked around and suddenly declared war just to capture a worker. So this strategy ends up being a cheesy strategy only available to human players forcing the AI to protect their workers while humans can just ignore that part.

[HansLemurson]

I have zero problems with consumable workers, even if it does mean that cities "might as well build improvements directly". They are an elegant way of implementing Public Works where it feels alive and interactive.

The paradigm in Civ is that Units are what do things on the map. If the tiles just developed on their own after being fed production by the city, it wouldn't seem like you were doing things, they would just happen.

...However given that that's how City Buildings will work, I'm really not sure what to think any more.

[Sian]

Builders (civ6 workers) are merely 4shot work boats ...

[rho21]

3-shot unless you're China, apparently. OMG, China so OP.

Speaking of Great People, I unlocked a single Great Scientist during my run, and it revealed an interesting reworking of that system. One historical figure of each category is available at a time, and when you earn enough points in science, engineering, military, etc, you can either elect to recruit that great person or – if you don’t like that person’s specific bonuses – hold onto those points until someone else takes them and exposes the next Great Person in that category.

An interesting variation, but I'm not sure I'm a huge fan as it's described.
From similar mechanics in board games, I find it tends to lead to no-one wanting to select a mediocre thing if that might open up a much stronger option for the next player, at the same cost.
And will an AI ever be able to make that choice intelligently, against uncertain future options?

This can all be mitigated by the implementation: perhaps the cost could vary, or the difference in value could be low, or an unchosen great person could eventually die and be replaced. We'll have to see what ultimately emerges. Personally, I'd like a queue of options, at significantly increasing cost. You can push past a poor cheapest great person if you need to, and if not you will at least know what you're making available for your opponents by buying the cheapest one.

"We’ve been working to balance that sweet spot for a couple of years. The key number is what percentage of a technology do you get from a boost? If it’s too high, all people are doing is playing the boosts." According to Firaxis’ testing, a 50% boost is that sweet spot, and doesn’t discourage choice.

That feels crazy high, but I guess it depends who you're balancing for. I'm hoping they will adjust this amount by difficulty level.

[GermanJoey]

ICS isn't even about having some half-cities tho. Those exist in real life: they are called small towns -- and there's really nothing wrong with them, in my view. ICS is when there are NO large towns, because every city on the map is a small town and they are crammed nose to nose, elbow to elbow. It's a Carpet of Doom of tiny cities -- originated in Civ2 when it was a winning move to plant a new city every 2 tiles, in all directions. ICS can still apply with cities 3 tiles apart or even 4, if the cities are crammed together as closely as the game rules allow, for the main purpose of trading city size for increased city count, but the term does NOT apply to high number of cities or adding in some weaker cities if core cities are allowed to grow fully tall and control all of their own tiles.

A lot of players who weren't there and don't know have, over the years, come up with their own definitions of "ICS" that are based on their own sensibilities rather than the history of the franchise. There's no debating with those folks (for me), in a sense, because they are misusing the term and talking about something else. We end up talking past one another. Perhaps some of that is happening here.

None of that is happening here, you stubborn troll asshole. Everyone here understands what ICS is just fine. The root of the strategy is still the same, only the minimum distance between sites has changed. Oh, and, by the way, ICS originated in Civ1, not in Civ2. OH, BUT I GUESS SOME OF US DON'T HAVE A CIV PEDIGREE THAT GOES BACK THAT FAR, AND ONLY GOT STARTED LATE IN THE SERIES, LOL!!

[GermanJoey]

But I guess the reason for it is so that established cities can provide the production for the basic level of improvements in a new city.

If that was the goal, it could also be done by making a national pool of "public works" production which is then distributed between building improvements throughout the empire.

Hmmm, but the other aspect of workers is that they need to be spatially coordinated on the map. If you just had a big pool of production that you could shift around with a slider or something, then the game wouldn't be so interesting, I think.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

3-shot unless you're China, apparently. OMG, China so OP.

Speaking of Great People, I unlocked a single Great Scientist during my run, and it revealed an interesting reworking of that system. One historical figure of each category is available at a time, and when you earn enough points in science, engineering, military, etc, you can either elect to recruit that great person or – if you don’t like that person’s specific bonuses – hold onto those points until someone else takes them and exposes the next Great Person in that category.

An interesting variation, but I'm not sure I'm a huge fan as it's described.
From similar mechanics in board games, I find it tends to lead to no-one wanting to select a mediocre thing if that might open up a much stronger option for the next player, at the same cost.
And will an AI ever be able to make that choice intelligently, against uncertain future options?

This can all be mitigated by the implementation: perhaps the cost could vary, or the difference in value could be low, or an unchosen great person could eventually die and be replaced. We'll have to see what ultimately emerges. Personally, I'd like a queue of options, at significantly increasing cost. You can push past a poor cheapest great person if you need to, and if not you will at least know what you're making available for your opponents by buying the cheapest one.

That's very similar to the system for founding fathers in civ colonisation that is based on the CIV4 engine. You get points in exploration, religion, military and trade I believe, and stockpile points until you want a founding father. The founding father acts more as a wonder than a GP in this game giving bonuses like a free building in each settlement, or discounts or prod bonuses. The choice is either waiting to save more points to get a better one later or one of the earlier less powerful ones straight away. Once one had been chosen they belonged to that faction only however.

It did work rather well IMO. The difference is I suppose is that these units never 'entered the board', and thus didn't block choices by other players.